Robin
Fleming.
Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in
Early
Medieval England.
Cambridge University
Press, due April 2003.
568pp.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback ISBN 052163038X, £75.00
Paperback ISBN 0521528461, £32.95
The
Domesday Book
contains a great many things, including the most comprehensive, varied,
and monumental legal material to survive from England before the rise
of
the common law. This book argues that it can - and should - be read as
a legal text. When the statistical information present in the great
survey
is stripped away, there is much material still left, almost all of
which
stems directly from inquest, testimony given by jurors impanelled in
1086,
or from the sworn statements of lords and their men. This information,
read in context, can provide a picture of what the law looked like, the
ways in which it was changing, and the means whereby the inquest was a
central event in the formation of English law. The volume provides
translations
(with Latin legal terminology included parenthetically) for all of
Domesday
Book's legal references, each numbered and organised by county, fee,
and
folio.
Contents:
Introduction:
disputes and the inquest; Part I. Domesday Book and the Law: 1. The
inquest
and the mechanics of justice; 2. Living in the shadow of the law; 3.
Disputes
and the Edwardian past; 4. Disputes and the Norman present. Part II.
The
Texts: Part III. Indices.
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